I am becoming better at releasing the “what-ifs” that clog my closets.”
― Lisa J. Shultz
One of the things I found most overwhelming in my second career as a lawyer was all the paper. I swear those documents had a life of their own. They could go from neat to messy without any input from me! Then how often did the one piece of paper I needed, that had been in my hand just a minute before, simply disappear – for days?
Clutter chaos
And don’t get me talking about controlling home clutter! Hiring a cleaner a few years ago may just have saved my marriage and my sanity. This was not so much because the house was cleaner, although that was a bonus. It was more that in order to save face I had to tidy up once a week before the cleaner came.
For me, as for many women with ADHD, life is a constant battle with all the stuff.
Plan-phobia
Unfortunately it’s not just physical clutter that plagues us but mental clutter as well. Planning and organising our lives generally can be a chore when we have ADHD. We find sticking to routines and schedules difficult – our ideas naturally pull us in different directions. Let’s face it, we just prefer flexibility and spontaneity to being dictated to by some jumped up time-management app or rigid planner.
My life has sometimes felt like a quest for the perfect planning tool that would help me put all the pieces of the jigsaw together in a way that made sense and enabled me to function with orderly efficiency like my serene colleagues. So I tried quite a few. And the more complex the tool, the less effective it was for me.
How disorganisation affects us
As the perfect solution eluded me, I battled on, turning up late to meetings because I hadn’t checked my diary, forgetting the tasks I hadn’t written down (you know, the ones that are so important that of course you won’t forget them…). Losing pieces of paper in the unruly piles. And drowning in a sea of clutter at home because I no longer had a cleaner to keep me on task.
Being a disorganised lawyer is hugely stressful. The job demands good organisation, or at least takes much more time, effort and excuses if you don’t measure up to the ideal!
Of course it’s not just me. Being disorganised in any area of life causes us all stress. But we’re especially vulnerable both to disorganisation and stress when we’re living with ADHD (diagnosed or not).
Is there a solution? These are some tricks and tips I’ve discovered along the way that have helped me control the chaos.
Controlling physical clutter
Start small
I’ve learned that as a general principle it’s best to work with who we are and how we function naturally rather than trying to fight against it. Obvious, but it took me a long time to work out!
First of all, I try to simplify by limiting the number of things I buy or bring into my home. And to build on this, I take advantage of the charity collection bags that come through the door to donate stuff I don’t use or no longer need. (And think about the upkeep needed by anything you do allow in. For example things that need to be dry-cleaned? Not worth the hassle for me. Linen? OK if you’re happy with the crumpled look – I am. You get the idea!)
Next, I accept that I’m never going to enjoy tidying and organising stuff. If I aim to achieve some ambitious whole-house clean I will never even get started, because the challenge is simply too big for me to face. Hello overwhelm!
So I need to tackle my stuff-taming in small doses. I find I can cope if I tell myself I’ll just spend 10 minutes on a drawer, or a particular pile in the living room that’s getting on top of me (not literally, although there have been times…).
Sometimes if I can see an improvement after 10 minutes I’m motivated to do a bit more! It’s mainly a question of overcoming my natural resistance to the activity by making the intention a manageable one.
Storage
I’ve been seduced in the past by fancy storage systems that promise to keep everything meticulously organised and hidden away. I think there are a few reasons why they haven’t worked for me.
First of all, you have to organise the stuff meticulously yourself to start with, and then keep on top of the organisation pretty much constantly (a bit like my papers at work, my stuff descends into chaos when I turn my back).
Then, when things are out of sight, I forget I’ve got them. Or I can’t find what I’m looking for because the meticulous organisation isn’t my natural way of organising things. As a result, I end up buying something I’ve already got (somewhere…).
So simple systems, and ones that allow me to see what I’ve got, are the ones that work best for me. For example my wardrobe just has shelves and each shelf has mainly one type of thing on it. Take the underwear shelf – my socks are paired up but otherwise free-range, not tidily sorted. It means I can easily see what I’ve got and decide what to wear as soon as I open the door. And it feels organised to me, which is good for the stress levels.
Having my stuff visible works best for me, but it may not for you. It’s all a question of experimenting.
Hire a cleaner if you can!
I would definitely still advise anyone who can afford it to pay a cleaner to come in once a week. I guarantee you will have a tidier – as well as cleaner – home simply because, if you’re anything like me, you won’t expect another human being to clean around your piles of clutter! Not to mention the shame.
Controlling mental clutter – planning solutions
Simple is best
As with physical clutter, any solution has to be in sync with our natural mental processes if it’s going to work.
For me, this means it has to be simple and not too restrictive. Some of the clever apps I’ve tried have seemed promising at first, but always end up feeling like a cage.
So after giving up on the sophisticated apps and detailed planners, what I now use day-to-day is this two-pronged approach:
- a simple A3 weekly spread to record the things I have to or want to do each day – only things like appointments have a specific time slot and for the rest I just give a rough indication of the maximum amount of time I want to spend on each task;
- the calendar on my iPhone to remind me (several times) of appointments, meetings, deadlines and anything like birthdays and my cat’s flea treatment dates that I really don’t want to miss.
I reckon a whiteboard would work well instead of the A3 spread, but for me the challenge would be getting it fixed to the wall in a household devoid of practical skills. And the weekly spread doesn’t really need to be as big as A3, but I like being able to scribble notes on it.
Update: I am now attempting to use a semi-flexible time-blocking system using a digital calendar, and this experiment is going well so far!
Work-life overview
If you’re an employee, your schedule and way of working for your job will probably not be fully in your control. You may even be forced to follow a particular time-management system.
One thing I came to realise was crucial for my sanity and adequate functioning at work was having an overview of everything I had to do (professional and personal) in one place. Even if that meant duplication. Things quickly fell apart if I had to look in two or three or more different places to get a bird’s eye view of my life.
Summing up
Many women with ADHD are challenged by organisation issues, I know it isn’t just me.
So to recap, I believe the fundamental principles of chaos-control for us are:
- working with who we are: solutions have to fit the way we think and function
- keeping it simple
- having an overview of all the demands on our time
and hiring a cleaner if at all possible!
We all need things to aim for, whatever the circumstances of our lives. Having ADHD means we value flexibility and spontaneity, but that doesn’t equate to aimlessness or lack of purpose. So we do need ways of organising our minds and our lives.
And if you’re like me and this doesn’t come naturally, I hope my thoughts have given you some ideas – or at least a different perspective.
If you’re an organisation wizard – or even just coping like me – share your tips and tricks or thoughts in the comments.